The Benefits of a Family Bed

When my children were babies, I found sharing a family bed with them was
so important in getting enough sleep. One of the biggest shocks when
you have a new baby is finding out how little sleep you have to manage
with. If your baby sleeps with you it can dramatically increase the
amount of sleep you get.

The reasons for this are:

• Your baby senses you are there, feels safe and sleeps for longer between feeds.

•
When your baby does wake you can just roll over on your side and feed
him/her. After a while, once you have breastfeeding well established,
you will find that you can dose off while your baby is still feeding.

• You don’t have to get out of bed, so you don’t get cold and fully woken up which can make it very hard to fall asleep again.

• Sometimes dad can soothe the baby back to sleep again without mom having to wake up at all

•
If you need to change a nappy, you can do it from the warmth and
comfort of your bed. Neither you, nor your baby, will be so disturbed
as if you had to get the baby out of a cot to do it.

• A very
important reason for having your baby sleeping in a family bed with you
is that the chances of cot death are greatly reduced. Mothers,
especially, have a almost a sixth sense when it comes to their babies
and, when you sleep with your baby, you often wake for just a few
seconds to check that the baby is OK. I am also sure that the baby is
gently stimulated during the night by the movements of mom and dad next
to him/her and that this protects against the possibility of the baby
stopping breathing.

There have been some scaremongering stories about the dangers of
having your babies sleeping with you. You hear the occasional story
about a baby having been smothered by a parent rolling on him/her or
being caught under the heavy covers. As long as you are not under the
influence of drugs or alcohol when you go to bed, the chances of this
happening are extremely small. Cot death is a much greater risk to your
baby than this. If you do happen to go to bed having had a few drinks,
then it would be a wise precaution to put your baby to bed on a small
mattress next to your bed, rather than in bed with you. As far as the
covers are concerned, a duvet generally has many air pockets in it so is
unlikely to smother a baby. You can also ensure that your baby sleeps
high up in the family bed near your face, and has his her own blanket
rather than being covered with your duvet.

If you are worried
about your baby falling out of your bed there a couple of things you can
do. One is to put your mattress on the floor and put the bed away for a
while (if possible). Secondly, you can buy a bed guard to put on the
side of the bed your baby normally sleeps on.

With my first two
children, I had a mattress on the floor which worked really well. It
meant that, when my daughter was born, my son could continue to sleep
with us on a mattress next to our bed. I am sure this is what helped
him to accept her so easily into our family. By the time my third child
was born we had had enough of sleeping on the floor, so we used a bed
guard to stop her rolling out of bed, which worked very well.